The C2E2 Spider-man 60th Panel, some interesting things been said.

[RJT]

Again as I was saying they tried to give Peter and new cast and that failed over time and then moved back to his core cast

This is an interpretation of what has happened. Another one is different creative teams utilize different characters depending on the story they want to tell.

[RJT]

Sure seems like this discussion has moved from a discussion about the marriage to a discussion about MJ in general.

It shouldn’t have. I don’t think anyone here disagrees that Mary Jane is a key supporting character.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

What evidence? He never even drew her face! She never even met Peter while Ditko was drawing the book! You are confusing conjecture with evidence. I provided evidence: Romita saying that Stan (Spider-Man's co-creator) wanted Gwen to be Peter's main love interest. And she was for a very long time! It was only later, after Gwen died that Mary Jane emerged as a romantic foil for Peter.
Fans liked her! Conway and later Stern and DeFalco fleshed her out to make her a really fascinating character. She's far more interesting than Gwen. I just disagree with folks that she should be married to Peter. You're the one who says I am not entitled to that opinion because Steve Ditko intended her to be Spider-Man's true love, and I pointed out that his co-creator preferred Gwen.
You posted a blog post claiming that Ditko intended Mary Jane be Peter's true love.
Here's a blog post claiming the exact opposite, that Ditko wanted Gwen to be with Peter: https://www.comicbasics.com/history-...nd-spider-man/
You know what? We'll never know which is correct because Ditko is dead and famously did not like discussing Spider-Man.
So maybe stop with the appeal to authority.
Another poster asked us (me?) to move on, that this is getting excessive. And it probably is. But these forums are a weird echo chamber where opinions are presented as facts and since the pro-marriage people get so aggressive and haughty that it makes the forums more self-selecting and therefore a bigger echo chamber. I admit that there is a very vocal contingent of people who want the marriage restored. Why can't any of you concede there's a contingent of people who literally could not care less about it and just like reading Spider-Man comics?

1. You're the one who invited us to play the Word of God game with the marriage. By definition, the one trying to appeal to authority is you.

2. You say you don't want to appeal to authority, but you're still talking about Stan and Steve like what they thought is more important than what everyone else thinks. Again, that's an appeal to authority. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

3. Correct, there are people who literally could not care less about the marriage and just like reading Spider-Man comics. This has nothing to do with why other people think OMD and the current status quo are meh, though.

Sure seems like this discussion has moved from a discussion about the marriage to a discussion about MJ in general.

There's always been huge overlap between people who dislike the marriage and people who dislike MJ specifically as Peter's wife.

[RJT]

1. You're the one who invited us to play the Word of God game with the marriage. By definition, the one trying to appeal to authority is you.

2. You say you don't want to appeal to authority, but you're still talking about Stan and Steve like what they thought is more important than what everyone else thinks. Again, that's an appeal to authority. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

3. Correct, there are people who literally could not care less about the marriage and just like reading Spider-Man comics. This has nothing to do with why other people think OMD and the current status quo are meh, though.

I didn’t even bring up Steve Ditko. That was you.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

I didn’t even bring up Steve Ditko. That was you.

First appeal to authority and to Word of God in this thread:

And that's different than what Quesada did how? The creator working on the book decided that the characters shouldn't be together. Seems the same in principle.
Unless you're trying to make the case that anything that Ditko and Lee did together on Spider-Man is sacrosanct, then I've got some bad news for you about Mary Jane.

[RJT]

First appeal to authority and to Word of God in this thread:

You should check what I was responding to—first reference to Ditko and appeal to authority was from you.

Actually no, because Ditko broke them up and established them as ultimately incompatible prior to him leaving. Lee/Romita bringing their relationship back out of the blue would have literally been the opposite of continuity and consistency.

This is getting tiring, so I’m going to dip out and just sum up my points: I questioned the assertion that there is a “sizable” group of readers who are marriage partisans. I maintain that most readers don’t care either way, and what I used as my evidence is the fact that Spider-Man has maintained his sales position for the past 15 years, and if there were a sizable group there would be a corresponding sizable drop in readership. And I posited that Marvel has told us for the past 15 years that they have no interest in reinstating the marriage because they are telling the truth: they have no interest in reinstating the marriage because it ties the hands of their creators (just like it did a generation ago) and it doesn’t gain them anything that can’t be done with Peter and MJ being in a committed relationship (like in Spencer’s run.)
None of these should be controversial statements but when I’m talking with people who believe Marvel is using “psy-ops” against its readers, I really underestimated how echoey this chamber is.

[Mercwmouth12]

You should check what I was responding to—first reference to Ditko and appeal to authority was from you.



This is getting tiring, so I’m going to dip out and just sum up my points: I questioned the assertion that there is a “sizable” group of readers who are marriage partisans. I maintain that most readers don’t care either way, and what I used as my evidence is the fact that Spider-Man has maintained his sales position for the past 15 years, and if there were a sizable group there would be a corresponding sizable drop in readership. And I posited that Marvel has told us for the past 15 years that they have no interest in reinstating the marriage because they are telling the truth: they have no interest in reinstating the marriage because it ties the hands of their creators (just like it did a generation ago) and it doesn’t gain them anything that can’t be done with Peter and MJ being in a committed relationship (like in Spencer’s run.)
None of these should be controversial statements but when I’m talking with people who believe Marvel is using “psy-ops” against its readers, I really underestimated how echoey this chamber is.

This sounds more like a degeneration x rant but everyone is entitled to their opinion

[WebLurker]

Geez, can we give the it all a rest for awhile? We get it, some people are still angry that the marriage is gone and that Marvel sometimes breaks up Peter and MJ and some people don't care and get angry that the debate is still going on years after the fact. Same rigamarole going on since 2007, with nothing new to add to the conversation.

Yes, it sucks that the marriage was written out and it was a mistake on all levels, but it's not the end of the world. Personally, I'm getting exhausted over it and would like to preserve my anger r.e. entertainment for the Batgirl cancelation (and how David Zaslav has been screwing over the DCEU in general, but mostly Batgirl).

[Matt Rat]

Yes, it sucks that the marriage was written out and it was a mistake on all levels, but it's not the end of the world.

Some of us are trying to argue that it's not the end of the world, because the marriage content is still coming and we're steadily making more and more progress with it, but it gets put down as not mattering all that much for the most absurd reasons.

[Spider-Man Crawl Space]

Not sure if you saw it, but the fan who asked the question at C2E2 is a regular at the Crawlspace. He wrote a follow up to the response.
https://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/...riage-at-c2e2/

[The BaRoN]

Not sure if you saw it, but the fan who asked the question at C2E2 is a regular at the Crawlspace. He wrote a follow up to the response.
https://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/...riage-at-c2e2/

Great article, he’s spot on and we should make it clear by not buying this hot garbage to get it through their heads this isn’t good enough.

[Matt Rat]

Not sure if you saw it, but the fan who asked the question at C2E2 is a regular at the Crawlspace. He wrote a follow up to the response.
https://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/...riage-at-c2e2/

Hey Crawl Space, thanks for reminding us of it, I did share this link a few pages ago but it got buried amongst all the debating.

[Lee]

Great article, he’s spot on and we should make it clear by not buying this hot garbage to get it through their heads this isn’t good enough.

I agree that you shouldn't buy it if you're not enjoying it.

I don't think this will be an effective strategy to get Spider-Man remarried in the core continuity though.

They unmarried Spider-Man in 2007. Sales have remained strong from 2008 to the present day. If sales sharply drop in late 2022, Marvel has no reason to believe that this is in response to a creative decision made in 2007, they'll just think that the current storylines or creative team aren't exciting the audience.

[Frontier]

I definitely don't think Peter having a stable relationship hurts sales at all, since it didn't impede Spencer at all.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

This doesn't get talked about enough, but the OMD debate is actually two debates, not one.

The first one is around whether or not Spider-Man should be an underachieving loser and (more importantly) stay that way.

The second one is whether he should be in a long-term relationship with MJ (married or unmarried).

There is overlap between the two debates, but they're different things.

In theory, you can have a Spider-Man book where Peter is single and MJ is not around, but where Spider-Man is still competent and growing as a person. Like Zdarsky's run on Spectacular. No one ever brings up how liked it was because it doesn't fit the narrative that people are only upset about the marriage being gone.

If I can't have Peter and MJ together (let alone MJ in the book), I would at least like Zdarsky's Spider-Man to be the standard going forward than BND Spider-Man.